Today’s reading hits me personally. I figure that ministers are to be examples of how to follow Jesus. So, on the first day I read this devotion and come to this:What is your priority today? Jesus points us from a horizontal lifestyle that focuses on needs, people, calendars, budgets, and a seemingly endless list of "important" activities, toward a vertical posture that fixes our eyes on His love, purpose and presence and soaks in all that He is.

I confess: I suffer from “Martha Syndrome.” I like to “do.” And that sounds suspiciously like the horizontal lifestyle. Repentance is in order.

The “LIVE:” part of the devotional, points me to the remedy for the Martha Syndrome. I like the way Dave puts it, “We need to focus our hearts vertically before acting in the horizontal.”

I would like to share excerpts from a book that I'm now reading that seem to (me) apply to the Day 1 devotional, "AHA" by Kyle Idleman.
Do you have some quiet moments set aside in the busy-ness of your life? The Bible says in Psalms to "Be still." God says, "Be still and know that I am God" (Ps. 46:10). I like this definition of stillness: silence on the outside and surrender on the inside. Recently, I read about a church in England that recorded the "sound of silence" on a CD and provided the CD to the congregation with the challenge to listen to it once a day over the next week. It was marketed as a half-hour of listening to absolutely nothing. You may not have a recording of the sound of silence readily available, but I would encourage you to get alone with your Bible and spend some time in solitude and silence anyway. Go vertical!

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Steve & Mike

Steve and Mike will post daily reflections on Vertical with Jesus by David and Kim Butts starting on January 1st. We would encourage you come take this journey with us.